Download or read book Understanding Tracy Letts written by Thomas Fahy and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in drama as well as Tony Awards for best play and best actor, Tracy Letts has emerged as one of the greatest playwrights of the twenty-first century. Understanding Tracy Letts, the first book dedicated to his writing, is an introduction to his plays and an invitation to engage more deeply with his work—both for its emotional power and cultural commentary. Experiencing a Tracy Letts play often feels akin to reading a Cormac McCarthy novel, watching a Cohen Brothers film, and seeing an episode of Breaking Bad at the same time. His characters can be ruthlessly cruel and funny, selfish and generous, delusional and incisive, and deceptive and painfully honest. They keep secrets. They harbor biases and misconceptions. And in their quest to find love and understanding, they often end up being the greatest impediments to their own happiness. As a writer, Letts can move seamlessly from the milieu of a Texas trailer park to the pulsating nightlife of London's countercultural scene, the stifling quiet of small-town Ohio to the racial tensions of urban Chicago. He thrives in the one-act format, in plays like Mary Page Marlow and The Minutes, as well as the epic scope of August: Osage County and Linda Vista. With a musician's sense of timing, Letts shifts between humor and heartache, silence and sound, and the mundane and the poetic. And he fearlessly tackles issues such as gender bias, racism, homophobia, and disability rights. Contemporary American life thus becomes a way to comment on the country's troubled history from Native American genocide to the civil rights movement. The personal narratives of his characters become gateways to the political. Understanding Tracy Letts celebrates the range of Letts's writing, in part, by applying different critical approaches to his works. Whether through the lens of disability studies, the conspiracy genre, food studies, the feminist politics of quilting, or masculinity studies, these readings help bring out the thematic richness and sociopolitical dimensions of Letts's work.
Download or read book Mary Page Marlowe written by Tracy Letts and published by Samuel French, Incorporated. This book was released on 2017 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mary Page Marlowe leads an unremarkable life. As an accountant in Ohio with two children, few would expect her life to be inordinately intricate or moving. However, it is choices, both mundane and gripping, and where those choices have taken Mary Page Marlowe that make her life so intimate and surprisingly complicated. From Pulitzer-and Tony-winning playwright Tracy Letts comes a piece about the fragility of a moment and its effects on one's identity."--Back cover.
Download or read book Bug written by Tracy Letts and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-04 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dark comedy takes place in a seedy motel room outside Oklahoma City, where Agnes, a drug-addled cocktail waitress, is hiding from her ex-con ex-husband. Her lesbian biker friend R.C. introduces her to Peter, a handsome drifter who might be an AWOL Gulf War veteran. They soon begin a relationship that takes place almost entirely within the increasingly claustrophobic confines of her motel room. Peter begins to rant about the war in Iraq, UFOs, the Oklahoma City bombings, cult suicides, and then secret government experiment on soldiers, of which he believes he is a victim. His delusions infect Agnes and the tension mounts as mysterious strangers appear at their door, past events haunt them at every turn and they are attacked by real bugs. Tracy Letts's tale of love, paranoia, and government conspiracy is a thought-provoking psycho-thriller that mixes terror and laughter at a fever pitch.
Download or read book August written by Tracy Letts and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August; Osage County a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest - and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed.
Download or read book Linda Vista TCG Edition written by Tracy Letts and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Letts is a master of pitch-dark comedies that measure the grisliest depths of human behavior…Linda Vista is very funny, equally unsettling…An inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times Fifty-year-old Wheeler is moving into his own apartment after a nasty divorce. With a blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once you’ve already grown up.
Download or read book Killer Joe written by Tracy Letts and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1999 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killer Cop Tony Law meets trailer-park trash Phil Nichol and Lizzie Roper in Tracy Letts' jaw-dropping smash-hit dark comedy. Breath-taking events. Truly shocking behaviour. Thrilling high-energy climax.
Download or read book Superior Donuts written by Tracy Letts and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 2010 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: Arthur Przybyszewski owns a decrepit donut shop in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Franco Wicks, a black teenager who is his only employee, wants to change the shop for the better. This comedy-drama by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-w
Download or read book Man from Nebraska written by Tracy Letts and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encouraged by his minister, Ken decides to find himself and his faith by impulsively flying to London, where he navigates the new and somewhat dangerous realm of British counterculture. Tracy Letts's play dares to ask the big questions, revealing the hidden yearning and emotion that can spur eccentric behaviour in outwardly conventional people."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Minutes written by Tracy Letts and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing new comedy from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of August: Osage County.
Download or read book Theatre of the Unimpressed written by Jordan Tannahill and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
Download or read book Something Clean written by Selina Fillinger and published by Concord Theatricals. This book was released on 2019 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlotte has been a mother for nineteen years, a wife for three decades, and a respectable community member her entire life. But when her only child is incarcerated for sexual assault, her once-immaculate world is forever tainted. Selina Fillinger’s intimate new drama follows one woman struggling to make sense of her own grief, love, and culpability.
Download or read book Alan Ball written by Thomas Richard Fahy and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected interviews with the screenwriter of the Academy Award-winning film American Beauty and creator of the Emmy Award-winning television series Six Feet Under and True Blood
Download or read book Where the Heart Is written by Billie Letts and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2001-04-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A down on her luck pregnant teen finds herself living in a shopping center in this Oprah's Book Club selection that inspired the film starring Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman. Talk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change. But Novalee is about to discover hidden treasures in this small Southwest town–a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people willing to help a homeless, jobless girl. From Bible-thumping blue-haired Sister Thelma Husband to eccentric librarian Forney Hull, they are about to take her–and you, too–on a moving, funny, and unforgettable journey.
Download or read book Peering Behind the Curtain written by Thomas Richard Fahy and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Book of Will written by Lauren Gunderson and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.
Download or read book Made in the U S A written by Billie Letts and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2008-07-08 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of Where the Heart Is returns with a heartrending tale of two children in search of a place to call home. Lutie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her twelve-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father. While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas. As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy's old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off to Las Vegas in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number and, clearly, no interest in the kids he left behind. Made in the U.S.A. is the alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair and frightening the world is before they come to a place they can finally call home.
Download or read book Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination written by T. Fahy and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the artistic use of freak shows between 1900-1950. During this period, the freak show shifted from a highly popular and profitable form of entertainment to a reviled one. But why? And how does this response reflect larger social changes in the United States at the time? Fahy examines this change and how artists responded.